We do not want to be with Yekaterina.
We want to go home to America.
We want to be with our mother.
We hate you.
Good-bye.
The deputy looked up in time to see Ivan boarding his helicopter. Look at him! Look at Ivan Borisovich! He had everything in the world: a mountain of money, a supermodel for a wife. Everything but the love of his children. Look at him! You are nothing, Ivan Borisovich! Nothing!
63
VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA
THE WARNING sign at the entrance was Soviet era. The birch trees on either side had been there since the time of the tsars. Forty yards along the narrow track was a Range Rover, two Russian guards in the front seat. Mikhail flashed his lights. The Range Rover made no move.
Mikhail opened his door and climbed out. He was wearing a heavy gray parka zipped to the chin and a dark woolen hat pulled low. For now, he was just another Russian. Another one of Ivan’s boys. An Alpha Group veteran with a bad attitude. The sort who didn’t like having to get out of the car when it was ten below zero.
Hands shoved into his pockets, head down, he went to the driver’s side of the Range Rover. The window slid down. Mikhail’s gun came out.
Six bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.
Gabriel murmured a few words into his lip mic. Mikhail reached across the lifeless driver, turned the wheel hard to the right, moved the shift from PARK to DRIVE. The Range Rover eased clear of the track and came to rest against a birch tree. Mikhail switched off the engine and threw the keys into the woods. A few seconds later, he was next to Gabriel again, speeding toward the front of the dacha.
AT THAT same instant, on the back side of the dacha, three men acquired three targets. Then, on Navot’s mark, three men fired three shots.
Three bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.
They crept forward through the birch trees and knelt over their dead. Secured weapons. Silenced radios. Navot spoke softly into his lip mic. Targets neutralized. Rear perimeter secured.
EXACTLY ONE hundred twenty-eight miles to the east, on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, Irina Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Bulganov, unlocked the door of Galaxy Travel and changed the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. Seven minutes late, she thought. Not that it mattered. Business had fallen off a cliff—or, in the words of Galaxy’s sometimes poetic general manager, it was locked up tighter than the Moscow River. The Christmas holidays had been a bust. Bookings for the spring ski season were nonexistent. These days even the oligarchs were hoarding their cash. What little they had left.
Irina settled into her desk near the window and did her utmost to appear busy. There was talk of cutbacks at Galaxy. Reduced commissions. Even firings. Thank you, capitalism! Perhaps Lenin had been right after all. At least he had managed to do away with the uncertainty. Under the Communists the Russians had been poor and they had stayed poor. There was something to be said for consistency.
The ping of the automatic entry chime interrupted Irina’s thoughts. Looking up, she saw a small male figure slipping through the doorway: heavy overcoat, woolen scarf, fedora, earmuffs, briefcase in right hand. There were a thousand more just like him on Tverskaya Street, walking mounds of wool and fur, each indistinguishable from the next. Stalin himself could stroll down the street bundled in his warms, and no one would give him a second look.
The man loosened his scarf and removed his hat, revealing a head of thinning, flyaway hair. Irina immediately recognized him. He was the better angel who had convinced her to talk about the worst night of her life. And he was now walking toward her desk, hat in one hand, briefcase in the other. And, somehow, Irina was now on her feet. Smiling. Shaking his cold, tiny hand. Inviting him to sit. Asking how she might be of assistance.
“I need some help planning a trip,” he said in Russian.
“Where are you going?”
“The West.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“How long will you be staying?”
“Indefinitely.”
“How many in your party?”
“That, too, is still to be determined. With luck, we’re going to be a large group.”
“When are you planning to leave?”
“Late this evening.”
“So what precisely can I do?”
“You can tell your supervisor you’re going out for coffee. Make sure you bring your valuables. Because you’re never coming back here again. Ever.”
64
VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA
A RUSSIAN DACHA can be many things. A timbered palace. A toolshed surrounded by radishes and onions. The one at the end of the narrow track fell somewhere in between. It was low and stout, solid as a ship, and clearly built by Bolshevik muscle. There was no veranda or steps, just a small door in the center, reached by a well-worn groove in the snow. On either side of the door was a window of paned glass. Once upon a time, the frames had been forest green. Now they were something like gray. Thin curtains hung in both windows. The curtain on the right moved as Mikhail slid the Range Rover into PARK and killed the engine.
“Take the key.”
“You sure?”
“Take it.”
Mikhail removed the key and zipped it into a small pocket over his heart. Gabriel glanced at the two sentries. They were standing about ten feet from the dacha, guns cradled across their chests. Their positioning presented Gabriel with something of a challenge. He would have to fire at a slight upward trajectory so that the rounds didn’t shatter the windows upon exiting the Russians’ skulls. He made this calculation in the time it took Mikhail to pick up a cylindrical thermos flask. He had been making such calculations since he was a boy of twenty-two. Just one more decision to make. Which hand? Right or left? He had the ability to make the shot with either. Because he would be climbing out of the Rover on the passenger’s side, he decided to fire with the right. That way there would be no chance of banging the suppressor against the fender on the way up.
“Are you sure you want them both, Gabriel?”
“Both.”
“Because I can take the one on the left.”
“Just get out.”
Once again, Mikhail opened the door and climbed out. This time, Gabriel did the same thing, parka unzipped, Beretta at the seam of his trousers. Mikhail approached the sentries, thermos aloft, chattering in Russian. Something about hot coffee. Something about the Moscow traffic being shit. Something about Ivan being on the warpath. Gabriel couldn’t be certain. He didn’t much care. He was looking at the spot, just beyond the Rover’s right-front tire, where he was going to drop to one knee and end two more Russian lives.
The guards were no longer looking at Mikhail but at each other. Shoulders shrugged. Heads shook.
And Gabriel knelt on his spot.
Two more flashes. Two more Russians down.
No sound. No broken windows.
Mikhail leaned the thermos against the base of the door and quickly retreated several steps.
The birch forest trembled.
Silence no more.
ON THE back side of the dacha, three men rose in unison and advanced slowly through the trees. Navot reminded them to keep their heads down. There was about to be a lot of lead in the air.
CHIARA SAT up with a start, hands cuffed, feet shackled, dust and debris raining down on her in the pitch-darkness. From above, she could hear the hammer of footfalls against the floorboards. Then muffled gunshots. Then screams.
“Someone’s coming, Grigori!”
More gunshots. More screams.
“Get on your feet, Grigori! Can you get on your feet?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You have to try.”
Chiara heard a moan.
“Too many broken bones, Chiara. Too little strength.”
She reached her cuffed hands into the darkness.
“Take my hands, Grigori. We can do it.”
A
few seconds elapsed while they found each other in the gloom.
“Pull, Grigori! Pull me up.”
He moaned again in agony as he pulled on Chiara’s hands. The instant her weight was centered over the balls of her feet, she straightened her legs and stood. Then, amid the gunshots, she heard another sound: the woman with milk-white skin and translucent eyes coming down the stairs in a hurry. Chiara inched closer to the door, careful not to trip over the shackles, and squeezed into the corner. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was certain of one thing. She wasn’t going to die. Not without a fight.
IT TURNED out none of the phones were working. Yekaterina’s didn’t work. The built-in on board the Bell didn’t work. And not one phone among the security detail worked. Not a single phone. Not until the children’s plane was airborne. Then the phones worked just fine. Ivan called the Kremlin and was soon talking to a close aide of the president’s. Oleg Rudenko placed several calls to his men at the dacha, none of which were answered. He glanced at his watch: 9:08. Another shift of guards was due any minute. Rudenko dialed the number for the senior man and lifted the phone to his ear.
THE COMBINATION of the concussive blast wave and the deafening thunderclap did most of the heavy lifting for them. All Mikhail and Gabriel had to do was take care of a few loose ends.
Loose end number one was the guard who had peered briefly through the window. Gabriel dispatched him with a quick burst of a Mini-Uzi seconds after entry.
Before the blast, two more guards had been enjoying a quiet breakfast. Now they were sprawled across the floor, separated from their weapons. Gabriel raked them with Uzi fire and stepped into the kitchen, where a fourth guard had been making tea. That one managed to squeeze off a single shot before taking several rounds in the chest.
The right side of the dacha was now secured.
A few feet away, Mikhail was having similar success. After following Gabriel through the blown-out doorway, he had immediately spotted two dazed guards in the dacha’s central hall. Gabriel had crouched instinctively before squeezing off his first shots, thus opening a clean firing line for Mikhail. Mikhail had taken it, sending a sustained burst of gunfire down the hall just a few inches over Gabriel’s head. Then he had immediately pivoted toward the sitting room. One of Ivan’s men had been watching the highlights of a big football match on television when the charge went off. Now he was covered in plaster and dust and searching blindly for his weapon. Mikhail put him down with a shot to the chest.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked the dying man in Russian.
“In the cellar.”
“Good boy.”
Mikhail shot him in the face. Left side of the dacha secured.
They headed to the stairs.
SQUEEZED INTO the corner of the blacked-out cell, Chiara heard three sounds in rapid succession: a padlock snapping open, a dead bolt sliding back, a latch turning. The metal door moved away with a heavy scrape, allowing a trapezoid of weak light to enter the cell and illuminate Grigori. Next came a Makarov 9mm, held by a pair of hands. The hands of the woman who had killed Chiara’s child with sedatives. The gun moved away from Chiara a few degrees and took aim at Grigori. His battered face registered no fear. He was in too much pain to be afraid, too weary to resist death. Chiara resisted for him. Lunging forward out of the gloom, she seized the woman by the wrists and bent them backward. The gun went off; in the tiny concrete chamber, it sounded like cannon fire. Then it went off again. Then a third time. Chiara held on. For Grigori. For her baby.
For Gabriel.
IVAN KHARKOV was a man of many secrets, many lives. No one knew this any better than Yekaterina, his former mistress turned devoted wife. Like Elena before her, she had entered into a foolish pact. In exchange for being granted her every material wish, she would ask no questions. No questions about Ivan’s business. No questions about Ivan’s friends and associates. No questions about why Elena had decided to hand over the children. And now, no questions about why the children had refused to leave the plane. Instead, she attempted to play the role Ivan had given her. She tried to hold his hand, but Ivan refused to be touched. Tried to soothe him with words, but Ivan refused to listen. For the moment, he had eyes only for Oleg Rudenko. The security man was shouting into his cell phone over the thudding of the rotors. Yekaterina heard words she wished she had not. How many men do you have? How many minutes until you arrive? No blood! Do you hear me? No blood until we get there! She summoned the courage to ask where they were going. Ivan told her she would find out soon enough. She told him she wanted to go home. Ivan told her to shut her mouth. She stared out the window of the helicopter. Somewhere down there was her old village. The village where she had lived before being discovered by the woman from the modeling agency. The village filled with drunks and losers. She closed her eyes. Take me home, you monster. Please, take me home.
THE YOUNG aide approached the Russian president with considerable caution. Aides usually did, regardless of their age. The president leaned away from the table and allowed the aide to whisper into his ear, a rare privilege. Then the look again, chin to his chest, eyes like daggers.
“He doesn’t look happy,” the British prime minister said.
“Oh, really? How can you tell?”
“I suppose things didn’t go well at the airport.”
“Wait until he hears the encore.”
THEY HAD hit the stairs on the run and were halfway down when the first gunshot erupted. Mikhail was leading the way, Gabriel a step behind, his view partially obscured. Nearing the bottom, a terrible smell greeted them: the stench of humans confined in a small place for too long. The stench of death. Then another gunshot rang out. And another. And another . . .
Gabriel heard a scream, followed by two distinct female voices shouting in anger. They were distinct because one of the voices was shouting in Russian. And the other was shouting in Italian.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, Gabriel raced after Mikhail, listening to the sound of Chiara’s voice, praying he would not hear another gunshot. Mikhail flung aside the door to the cell and entered first. Propped in one corner was a man, hands and feet shackled, face grotesquely distorted. Chiara was on her back, the Russian woman atop her. They were struggling over a gun and it was now very close to Chiara’s cheek.
Mikhail grabbed the weapon and pointed it toward the wall. As it discharged twice harmlessly, Gabriel seized a fistful of the Russian woman’s hair and pumped a single round through her temple. Now only one woman was screaming. Gabriel hurled the dead woman aside and fell to his knees. Chiara, in her frenzy, briefly mistook him for one of Ivan’s men and recoiled. He held her face in his hands and spoke to her softly in Italian. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s Gabriel. Please, try to be calm. We have to hurry.”
65
GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON
AFTERWARD, there would be a debate as to precisely how long it took Gabriel and Mikhail to perform their assignment. Total time was three minutes and twelve seconds—an impressive feat, made more so by the fact it took well over a minute just to drive the half mile from the first guard post to the dacha itself. From entry to rescue was an astonishing twenty-two seconds. Silence, speed, timing . . . And courage, of course. If Chiara had not decided to stand and fight for her life, both she and Grigori would surely have been dead by the time Gabriel and Mikhail reached the cellar.
Due to the miracle of advanced secure satellite communications, King Saul Boulevard was able to hear Gabriel whispering soothingly to Chiara in Italian. No one on the Operations Desk understood what was being said. It wasn’t necessary. The very fact Gabriel was speaking Italian to a hysterical woman told them everything they needed to know. The first phase of the operation had been a success. Mikhail confirmed it for them at 9:09:12 Moscow time. He also confirmed that Grigori Bulganov, though badly injured, was alive as well.
There arose in Tel Aviv a great roar as days of stress and sadness were released like steam from a valve. The cheering
was so loud that ten long seconds elapsed before Shamron understood precisely what had transpired. When he broke the news to Adrian Carter and Graham Seymour, a second cheer erupted in the London annex, followed by a third at the Global Ops Center at Langley. Only Shamron refused to take part. And with good reason. The numbers told him everything he needed to know.
Five agents.
Two weakened hostages.
One thousand yards from the dacha to the road.
One hundred twenty-eight miles to Moscow.
And Ivan in the air.
Shamron twirled his old Zippo lighter between his fingertips and looked at the clock: 9:09:52.
The numbers . . .
Unlike people, numbers never lied. And the numbers didn’t look good.
GABRIEL CUT away the cuffs and shackles and lifted Chiara to her feet.
“Can you walk?”
“Don’t leave me, Gabriel!”
“I’ll never leave you.”
“Stay with me!”
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and helped her up the stairs.
“You have to hurry, Chiara.”
“Don’t leave me, Gabriel.”
“I’ll never leave you.”
“Don’t leave me here with them.”
“Everyone’s gone, my love. But we have to hurry.”
They reached the top of the stairs. Navot was standing in the center hall, bodies at his feet, blood on the walls.
“Grigori’s a mess,” Gabriel snapped in Hebrew. “Bring him up.”
Gabriel helped Chiara around the bodies and headed toward the hole where the door had once been. Chiara saw more bodies. Bodies everywhere. Bodies and blood.